A Prairie Home Interview

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Two acting legends and a radio icon to talk with IGN.

By IGN Staff

Based partially on Garrison Keillor's long-running public radio variety show of the same name, A Prairie Home Companion is a historically-based fable from legendary director Robert Altman. Set around the final broadcast of a show that is losing its audience when stacked against the information age, Prairie features the Altman trademark stellar ensemble cast. Garrison Keillor effectively plays himself and also wrote the script. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are the sisters Johnson, Yolanda and Rhonda, respectively and Lindsay Lohan is Yolanda's daughter Lola. The amazing supporting cast includes Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen and Maya Rudolph.

Say what you want about meeting the latest "hot-for-the-moment" celeb, it's the true legends of the movie world that really get me excited. Within a one week span I got to speak to Paul Newman, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin. Oh, and Larry the Cable Guy. What a job!

Streep, Keillor and Tomlin were paired together recently to talk about their experiences working on the latest from director Robert Altman, who recently turned 81, and hasn't lost a beat. Prairie is a fun film and a nice alternative to more typical summer movie fare.

Streep (left) and Tomlin (right) rock out.

Although I'm admittedly less familiar with Keillor's body of work, he was a highly entertaining interview, not dissimilar to the portrayal of himself within the film. Streep and Tomlin couldn't have been more pleasant interviews, answering every question thoughtfully and happy to stick around post-interview and chat about some of their past work.

Q. Garrison, how do these ladies compare to the people you usually perform with?

GARRISON KEILLOR: I usually don't work with other people. I do the whole show myself. It's an amazing tour de force. (Laughs) They were perfect and they were part of this picture before this screenplay was written. I think Meryl signed onto it somewhere around the second draft when it was still kind of a crappy piece of work.

(Laughs)

MERYL STREEP: I don't agree.

KEILLOR: And then Lily came on soon after. So I had these two people in mind as I was writing these characters. It was just an amazing gift for a writer to have actors in mind - these two actors I should say.

Q. How many drafts did you got through? How long did it take?

KEILLOR: Well, I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore. It was many hundreds, not worth talking about.

STREEP: That's interesting though, do you not keep the previous things?

KEILLOR: There are no previous things.

(Laughs)

STREEP: Do you hit delete every time?

KEILLOR: You just keep churning.

STREEP: If you just keep churning and churning, what are you going to give to the University of Minnesota Library when, God forbid...

KEILLOR: Give them my laptop, I guess. Give them my lap, probably.

LILY TOMLIN: That would be great, just your laptop.

From left: Lohan, Keillor and Rudolph.

Q. Lily, hard for you to adapt to another comic sensibility not your own?

TOMLIN: No. I'm a big fan of Garrison's and I've listened to Prairie Home Companion for a very, very long time - except for one period when he went someplace and we didn't know where he went and we felt really left abandoned. But anyway&#Array;

KEILLOR: She redid the whole part herself. She completely made it her own.

TOMLIN: Yeah, I did. (Laughs) I redid [Meryl's] too. I was very busy. No, I didn't think about it. You think of yourself as an actor and come in. I love Garrison's sensibility anyway, so it's something I relate to and feel rapport with&#Array; And I don't want to embarrass myself with Ms. Streep. I want to be good enough to play with her. So I wanted to be just good.

STREEP: Or, if you do embarrass yourself, you want it to be really funny.

Q. How did you establish sisterly camaraderie?

TOMLIN: You want to know something really hilarious? Because I thought we looked so different, no one's going to believe we're sisters.

STREEP: I thought we looked alike.

TOMLIN: I tried to make your nose like mine. I mean my nose like yours.

STREEP: I thought something was happening at night. I felt that.

(Laughs)

TOMLIN: I had noses molded and everything, but my nose is too wide&#Array;

STREEP: But we both have that long, you know...

TOMLIN: Yeah we do. Somehow it was just an absolute blessing, wasn't it? Bob must have known. I don't know how he would know because I looked and I thought, 'Oh, we just don't look anything alike. Who's going to believe we're real sisters?' I believed that they'd believe it, but in my mind I had the doubts. Plus you need busy work to do, so I spent a lot of time having noses sculpted.